Biography

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Marie Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier, marquis de Lafayette was born at
Chavaniac, Auvergne, in 1757, to an old, illustrious family of the provincial and
military nobility. He lost both his parents early: his father was killed by the
British at the Battle of Minden when Lafayette was two years old (1759), and when he
was thirteen and attending the prestigious College de Plessis in Paris both his
mother and grandfather died (1770). The latter's death left Lafayette with a sizable
inheritance: he was actually the richest bachelor in France. In 1771 Lafayette
became one of the King's Musketeers, beginning the military career he had always
envisioned for himself. In February of 1773 he moved to Versailles as a protege of
Jean de Noailles, the Duc d'Ayen, becoming a lieutenant in the Noailles Dragoons in
April and promoted to captain one year later, shortly after his arranged marriage to
the Duc d'Ayen's daughter, Adrienne de Noailles on April 11, 1774. And yet,
Lafayette's chances at obtaining a position matching his wealth and status were
curtailed by the prevailing reformist mood and when the Ministry of War cut costs
and suppressed his regiment, he was relegated to reserve status (June1776.)

Lafayette first heard of the American revolt in 1775, at a dinner given by his
commander the comte de Broglie in Metz. Inspired to serve the American cause though
he knew very little about America beyond what he had read in Raynal and what he
heard from Franklin, Lafayette managed to sign on as a future major-general in the
American army in December 1776. But although by this time the French government was
sending covert aid to the Americans in the hope of securing French trade interests
(the "arms-for-tobacco deal"), Lafayette had to buy his own ship, La Victoire . It sailed from Spain on April 20, 1777 and
arrived at North Island, South Carolina on June 13, 1777. Initially disappointed to
find himself a general without a command, Lafayette was to return to France in 1782
having earned gloire for himself as well as liberty for
the American colonies.

When Lafayette met George Washington on July 31, 1777, it was the start of a famous
and long-lasting friendship, often described as a "father-son relationship."
Lafayette first saw combat at Brandywine (September 11, 1777). The leg wound that he
got there lent him military credibility, and he received command of the Virginia
division of the Continental Army, with which he spent the winter at Valley Forge
under nearly unlivable conditions. In 1778 Lafayette took part in battles at Barren
Hill and Monmouth Court House and served with the Continental detachment in Rhode
Island in conjunction with d'Estaing's expeditionary force. Earlier that year,
Congress had chosen Lafayette to lead a campaign into Canada, but the campaign was
ultimately abandoned as unfeasible.

Lafayette returned to a France that was now officially an ally of the United States
at the beginning of 1779. He was thus in France for the birth of his son George
Washington Lafayette, as he had not been when Adrienne de Lafayette gave birth to
their second daughter, Anastasie (1777), and buried Henriette, their first (1778).
During this year at home, in addition to pleading the American cause to his
compatriots, Lafayette was appointed to the French army as it prepared to invade
England. The invasion never came about, and Lafayette was in America again by April
1780. In February 1781, Lafayette led a detachment against troops led by the traitor
Benedict Arnold. Later that year he commanded forces against Cornwallis in the
decisive campaign of the American war.

Lafayette returned to France in 1782 a popular hero and lobbyist for American
economic interests. He accepted the position of quartermaster general of a
Franco-Spanish expeditionary force that was headed for British Canada, and then the
position of marechal de camp in 1783, the year peace was
officially declared in the United States. His second daughter Virginie was born in
September. In these inter-revolutionary years, Lafayette energetically involved
himself in the liberal causes of his day. He had been a member of the Freemasons
since 1775 but in 1782 publicly identified himself with this network of secret
societies that, with the literary salons of the day, formed pockets of free thought
within the ancient regime and eventually espoused liberal politics. Lafayette devoted
himself especially to the causes of toleration for French Protestants, whom he
visited in Cevennes in 1785. In one of his most original enterprises, he also
purchased a plantation in the French colony of Guiana which was to be the site of an
experiment in gradually emancipating black slaves so as to maximize both their
chances at integration into free society, and their productivity and birth rate.
Madame Lafayette oversaw the management of the plantation after the death of its
appointed manager, Richeprey, in 1786. During the 1780s, Lafayette's international
popularity was evidenced by his first "American Tour" in 1784 and an "European Tour"
in 1785, the highlight of which was a personal meeting with the "enlightened despot"
Frederick II of Prussia.

Lafayette's role in the French Revolution was conditioned by the several aspects of
his public identity, as paternalistic aristocrat, enthusiastic defender of freedoms,
self-serving hero, and soldier. In 1787 and 1788, Lafayette attended sessions of the
Assembly of Notables, called at this time to resolve pressing taxation issues. To
the Assembly Lafayette brought his call for the civil rights of Protestants (an
Edict of Toleration was in fact enacted in November of 1787). In 1789 Lafayette
represented the nobility when he was elected deputy to the Estates General, a long
inactive governing institution which now joined with the Third Estate to become the
National Assembly. Lafayette presented the " Declaration de
droits de l'homme et du citoyen " to the Assembly on July 11, 1789, and
was chosen vice-president of the National Assembly on the eve of the Fall of the
Bastille. In the turbulence that followed, Lafayette was proclaimed commandant of
the Garde Nationale, with the charge of keeping order in the streets of Paris, a
task in which his popular sway among the moderate bourgeoisie aided him. The Guard
escorted the King and Queen to Paris in October of 1789. On July 14, 1790, he
presided at the Fête de la Federation.

Criticism of Lafayette intensified when he ordered his men to fire on the unruly
crowd and forty at the Champs de Mars in 1791. In October of that year Lafayette
resigned as commandant of the Garde Nationale of Paris. In 1792 he became a
commander in the war with Austria, which began in April. Lafayette's censure of the
increasing influence of Jacobinism, and his basic inability to understand political
trends, placed him at odds with both the government and the opposition. He was
publicly accused of plotting to march on Paris with his troops. On August 19, 1792,
the National Convention, formed after the arrest of Louis XVI on August 10, replaced
Lafayette with Dumouriez, who dumbed him "a traitor" after he emigrated. Lafayette
was in fact intercepted by the Austrians and imprisoned for five years -- first at
Wesel, then at Magdebourg, Neisse and Olmütz. Adrienne Lafayette and the children,
who had been experiencing the revolution from the provinces, joined him in prison in
1795. Adrienne herself had been in jail in France, and had survived the guillotining
of her mother, grandmother and elder sister. The Lafayette family was more
fortunate; save George who was staying in America, they together bore two more years
of imprisonment. Freed in 1797, Lafayette remained on the list of proscribed emigres , living in exile in Holstein and Holland until
1799. Adrienne, meanwhile, was in France (1797-1799) trying to get permission for
her husband's return and to recover part of her inheritance: the Directory had
confiscated and sold all of Lafayette's properties in Bretagne and Auvergne except
for the house at Chavaniac.

With the establishment of the Consulate in November 1799 (the "18th Brumaire") the
political climate in France changed enough that Lafayette was able to repatriate. He
retired to La Grange (part of Adrienne's inheritance), where, during the years of
the Consulate and Empire (1800-1815), he led a relatively private life, pursuing the
interest in modern agriculture that he had developed in prison, and absorbed in the
day to day management of his estate and of his financial crises: Lafayette's
extremely generous financing of two revolutions, in combination with the loss of his
properties, left him deep in debt. In 1804 the American government expressed their
gratitude for Lafayette's contribution to the Revolutionary War by granting him a
tract of land in Louisiana, but this gift, like the Florida Lands granted him later,
in 1824, turned out to be something of a liability, in that his attempts to sell
portions of it to his creditors embroiled him in lawsuits and the lands themselves
were, in some cases, already occupied by settlers. Adrienne, in ill health since her
imprisonment, died in 1807.

With the Restoration (1815-1830) Lafayette was once more drawn into political life,
in the liberal opposition. In 1815 he served several terms in the Chamber of
Deputies, and insisted on Napoleon Bonaparte's abdication. Lafayette played a
leading role in the "Glorious Revolution" of July 1830 and found himself again
commandant of the Garde Nationale. He was now in his seventies. His decision to
support the duc d'Orleans' accession to the throne seemed to some a betrayal of his
role as defender of the republican ideals.

During the Restoration years La Grange became a mecca for Lafayette's many admirers.
His popularity grew even more with his American Tour of 1824-1825 as city after city
hailed Lafayette as almost another "Father of Our Country."

Finally, in the last years of his life, Lafayette, still true to his motto, " Cur non? " supported national insurrections in Belgium
(1830) and Poland (1831). He had followed Belgian politics since 1789 when the
Brabant revolted against Austrian domination, and the chief of the Flemish Catholic
party, Van der Noot, was in contact with the French government through the mediation
of Lafayette. As the President of the Comite Central en Faveur
des Polonais (1830-1832), Lafayette was active in fundraising and in
publicizing the plight of Poland and its refugees. He also during this time
corresponded with many members of the Carbonari, revolutionary Italians involved in
the 1831 uprising. Lafayette died in Paris on May 20, 1834.